TheRapist
Page 2
Meringue dated men. She dated almost any man that asked her. So she dated a lot. She had lots of first dates, but refused to let anything interfere with her self-maintenance schedule. Gym, facial, Brazilians, Restylane in the lips, occasional bouts of liposuction, Botox, highlights, root definition, augmentation, jazz classes, Jujitsu (a girl must learn how to defend herself), Pilates (fashionable but incredibly boring and she already spent way too much time on her back). She had little jobs on the side. Working part time in a variety of trendy boutiques on Melrose. Waitressing in a beachside pizzeria, (unusual pizzas; sushi, matzo ball, chicken fried duck). She was also on the books of an agency that gave her appointments to accompany business men from out of town to dinner. Well, she thought that these men might be lonely in a strange town and again, you never knew who you might meet or who he would know. Although she had no control over casting herself in roles (good, meaty roles, character roles, roles for a serious actress), she was in control in the way she spent her own time: dressing, washing, eating, dating, she even had control over her bathroom habits, thanks to psyllium husks, colon cleanse and spirulina/aloe vera cocktails. There was only one thing over which Meringue had no control and as much as she tried there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Meringue was in love, deeply in love with a wonderful man, and whenever he wanted her, wherever he wanted her, she would be there for him. Because she loved him. How she adored Manny Kofsberg.
*
Devon and Adrian
The Park Hyatt sat on its perch on Avenue of the Stars, hanging over the violently busy Olympic Boulevard. Olympic was not so much of a treacherous route anymore, not since the torn up 10 freeway had been repaired from the destruction of the 7.8 back in ’94. Golden in the sunlight, amber in the shadows, the hotel awaited its guests, visitors, prey. For it was so easy to be seduced by its decadent shades and hues. Fox, the famous studio neighbor, was the only real ‘city’ in Los Angeles. Made up of giant boards with made to measure towns, murals and painted streets, shells of buildings, painted perspective, fronts. All front, all faux, Shallow Town.
Devon and Adrian entered the marble-clad, rug-clad, orchid-clad lobby of the Park Hyatt. Out of the heat of the sun, the light was easy on their eyes, the air cool on their flushed skin. Adrian headed to the reception desk. Devon stayed beside the gargantuan royal blue and lemon yellow ceramic tub of blooms posing unselfconsciously in the centre of the lobby. There was no place for self consciousness in Los Angeles. Devon momentarily lost herself in the sweet color and vision of the orchids. Gazing into the heart, into the most intimate place of an orchid, she understood why this particular flower had no fragrance; it was almost too beautiful, too sculptured, too incredible a vision to have any room left for scent. But she could hear its passion, heartbeat, it’s very breath.
Adrian’s hand lightly brushed her shoulder. She reached up and grabbed his forearm, taut, golden hairs spun menacingly across the protruding veins. Her heart began to pound as they headed for the elevator which damply spat them out onto the fourth floor.
Inside the room, taupe walls and gauzy curtains in shades of creamy coffee, shadows played across the silken walls. This was a pseudo-virginal room, a fresh experience to the people who entered. New to Adrian. He placed the signed copy of her book inside the bedside table next to the bible, took her bag, a stiff, chocolate Hermés envelope and placed it on the beige and taupe striped chenille chair. He moved to her, creating a circle around her throat with his hands, pulling her body gently towards him, inches apart, their breath combining, each feeling the heat from the other.
Beads of perspiration had formed along her upper lip, like a row of auditioning chorus girls, each one anxious to be chosen from the line-up. One was selected, the victor, leaving the others behind, slowly melting its eager, winning way across her flushed lips. Adrian bent his head, licking it away, ruining its success. He sucked on her mouth, her tongue fighting its way inside of him. She won, and they were lost inside their sweet, wet, blended breath.
Devon eased out of their embrace.
Smiling slyly, she whispered, ‘that was all very romantic and sweet but can we get real now?’
Adrian looked deep into her eyes, a quizzical furrow spanning a miniscule moment in time, swiftly flew from his brow. Their history was unspoken. Words of no necessity. Just the knowledge. A secret. Lodged deep within them.
*
Meringue and Manny
Seven o’clock. Friday night. Everybody had left the office to escape work on the week-end. Except the cleaners. Except the odd, unable-to-flee-work victim. Except Manny Kofsberg. A navy and gold-braided Uniform sat at his polished desk in the vast, gray marble lobby. In the dim light, the only visible movements were the twitching of the Uniform’s baggy nose and the slow hands of the oversize steel wall clock. One of the exterior large glass doors opened and Meringue Pavlova tripped inside, teetering across the marble floor in her pseudo Louboutins, soles she had painstakingly painted with long lasting Sephora red, hoping nobody would ever find out that her soles had no Louboutin soul.
‘Hi! How are you tonight? I’m going up to fifteen,’ she trilled to the Uniform. Meringue was pleasant to all, due to her monotonous ‘you never knew who was related to whom in this town’ mantra. Doorman on a Monday and the Next Big Thing by the end of the week.
‘He’s expecting you Miss, third bank of elevators on the right.’ The Uniform, nose twitching, nodded towards the elevator. She knew the way, having made this journey so many times before and the Doorman knew she knew, but they kept the formalities. She headed to the fifteenth floor, leaving the Uniform twitching in the dimming light.
Inside the elevator Meringue plumped her hair, (an array of silvery-blonde highlights) hauled up her cleavage, (she’d paid through the nose for it, inserted through her new shell-like belly button by the fabulous Dr. Rey, so she presented it in all its pink-skinned, luminescent glory at every opportunity), carefully re-glossed her pouting mouth with a Lancome juicy tube.
Manny lounged in his leather chair and unzipped his pants. A soft chair, almost an armchair, so over-sized it practically resembled a small bed. His feet, encased in another handmade production by John Lobb, were thrown carelessly across his desk. Lights out. Meringue entered, smiling at Manny, her handsome boy.
‘Babycakes!’ She squeaked rapturously, dropping to her knees to crawl beneath his desk. He lowered his feet to the floor.
‘Hello darling, you look divine.’ He barely looked at her and made no move. She did.
‘Cakes...’ she murmured, and went to him, kneeling in front of his chair and unzipping his pants. He stroked the top of her head. She purred, turning feline. Suddenly the woman had become a cat. He thought of feeding her a tin of tabby’s best and sending her home with a box of Scoop Away. Ugly thought. Wipe it from his mind.
He watched her at work, his eyes glazing over. Her head was bouncing back and forth, her blonde hair shuddering with every gentle jolt. He suddenly had a strange urge to laugh, but managed to stifle it.
‘You’re beautiful,’ the words fell without meaning from his experienced mouth. She purred some more, wriggled. Then his mind left the room, entering a momentary Utopia, as she swallowed him, sucking him dry.
‘So beautiful...’ he groaned, ‘Oh Dev…devil,’ catching his error before completion. Why was Devon foremost on his mind, even in the middle of a supreme blow job?
‘As long as you think so Cakesy,’ purred Meringue through her moistened mouth.
Silence. She, purring and stroking in the quiet. He, feeling the palpable shift from orgasmic to discomfort. Then...
‘Are we going out babycakes, you said we might go for Chinese food…?’ She whispered, barely audible.
‘No, of course not,’ he snapped. Subject closed and she was ushered out. They had never been on a proper date. And still Meringue waited patiently, hoping for the day when Manny would become her real boyfriend.
*
Devon and Adrian
The
corrugated iron was pounding, breathing hard and fast beneath a slumping, slippery silver moon as Devon and Adrian slipped up the back staircase of the House of Blues. Beyond men in black, radios in hand, tiny microphones barely concealed in their ear, a short distance from their defensive tongues.
The Foundation Room beckoned, swathed in silk, red and orange flames of fabric draped menacingly, decadently, across the private room high above the city lights. Devon and Adrian loved playing this game, as if they were a real couple, just out on the town, nobody in the world but them knowing their real story.
Devon flopped down onto an enormous silken sofa that lounged smugly in an adjacent tiny room at the top of a few steps. Even more private. Just how she liked it. Sometimes. Adrian moved beside her and ran his long finger gently down her cheek ‘Stunning,’ he murmured. Tucking her long legs beneath her, she bit her bottom lip and whispered, ‘You Adrian, are as sensational as ever.’ He blushed slightly, the pink haze of his cheeks barely showing through his tanned skin. They gazed into each other, briefly traveling, silently searching through the longevity of their relationship.
A grinning waitress slyly mounted the steps.
‘Drinks?’ Adrian looked at Devon.
She smiled at the waitress. ‘Pellegrino, thanks.’
Over to Adrian. ‘Make that three.’
The waitress nodded through her static grin and too wide eyes, Botoxed up to the hilt and backed down the steps.
Adrian leaned back, legs apart, pushing up the linen sleeves of his Armani jacket. Devon put her hand softly between his legs. ‘Tell me what you’ve been doing since last time,’ moaned Adrian. She shook her head, removed her hand from the sharp right curve of his penis and gazed at him. Adrian shifted his weight. He was hard and uncomfortable. He studied her and stated rhetorically, ‘You really look amazing, you know.’
‘Men are so obvious,’ sighed Devon, rubbing the white, sun-free flesh of her throat, ‘We girls are so much more secretive with our body design.’ They gazed at each other without speaking, suspended in a different time. Her tongue began to feel its way along the corner of her lips. ‘You can’t tell just by looking at a woman if she is excited, can you?’
Adrian reached to her and with one hand, looking at her with genuine familiarity, and pulled her onto his lap. No resistance. He smiled slowly at her, so close that they were sharing molecules.
‘We have no clue,’ he smiled, lazily.
‘None?’
‘None.’
A throaty laugh erupted from her throat. ‘I know.’
‘Do you Devon?’
She nodded. Confident.
He ran his hand along the seam of her sheer black pants, felt the tiny string of her underwear as it barely nudged against her flesh.
‘No way of knowing?’
She shook her head. A snake-like curl looped itself onto an eyelash. He gently swept it aside, kissing her eyebrow. Looked into her eyes. Into her. Gently pushed her aside, back onto her space on the couch. This was a game they played. Over and over. Never tiring. Always new. Even if tainted. Slightly.
‘No way of knowing?’ Again he asked, again she shook her head. He looked down at his thigh. She followed his gaze. Beige linen pants, and a small wet patch near the top of his leg. He wiped it with his finger. Stuck it in his mouth. Licked his lips and suggested, ‘Yours I believe?’
In the early hours, with midnight almost a hazy memory, when an array of stars were looping themselves around the moon, each fighting for recognition in Hollywood, barely visible in the blacked out smog, Adrian followed Devon’s car home in a taxi. As she pulled her car to the kerb and stepped out he was already beside her. Their hearts were beating so hard they could feel each other through their clothes. She grew hot, hating their goodbyes. They clung to each other.
‘My flight leaves in less than an hour,’ he said, moving his lips across her face, tracing the contours in the dark. She looked up at him, their moist eyes locking in the moonlight. There was no need for words, but their history was such that they knew each other’s thoughts. He breathed into her mouth and she inhaled deeply. Then he moved slowly away, into the waiting taxi.
And was gone.
Again.
*
Someone with
TheRapist
‘Um, what I really wanted, all I ever wanted, I guess, was to have a partner, in everything, someone on my side. I never had that until I met my wife. My ex-wife. I never got the girl. Never even had a girlfriend in college. Not for the entire two years of my Masters. I was totally alone. And I never needed to talk about it. Aloud. Like this. Not until my girlfriend, my current, well, previous one, dumped me. My ex-girlfriend. I hate saying that. I thought I was totally in love with her, umm, I told her. I knew she felt the same way, um, I mean I thought she did. She never said. But I thought I could tell from the look in her eyes. Looking back, I don’t think that was the look at all. I think it was pity or something. I guess maybe I thought too many things. If she had loved me back, I wouldn’t be here now, talking to you. I’m a clever guy, right? And I have a handsome face, don’t I? I look great in photos, I’m totally photogenic. But she said my features got lost in my face somehow, you know, when I gained the weight. See, so then I took off the weight. For her. Fifty pounds of the hard earned stuff. And then I got her back! She dug me then, when I was thinner! Then I started to gain it back and she hated me again. I actually thought that she was wrong to not want me despite of my weight. I’m still the same guy, right? Just a little heavier. Well, a lot heavier. I used to think that too, right at the start. But there was nothing else to do except lose the weight if I wanted to get physical, because the way it was back then, every time I used to try and get near her she used to back off. She went on at me about being heavy, that she liked me but she hated me being big, you know. Fat. Fat! I’ve said it. I hate saying that. But I was always truthful with her. I told her exactly how I felt. And I kept on telling her the truth. After I lost the weight we got close and started an intimate relationship, but I had to tell her that she didn’t do much of anything during sex. Wouldn’t you think a woman would appreciate that kind of honesty and want to change maybe? But after I said that she did even less. In fact she barely went near me again. I thought that was so wrong. I was in total shock. Turns out, and I find it hard to say this and even harder to understand it, but it turns out that she thought I was pathetic in bed which is why I didn’t get a reaction. She said that when I got on top of her my stomach kind of swirled around her, pinning her down and she couldn’t move. Can you believe this woman? I don’t know. I don’t get women. I mean, I just don’t get them, you know? What do they mean? What do they even mean when they say stuff like that? She said I made her uncomfortable. Like she was a performing seal or something! Can you believe her? Anyhow, she dumped me. I was getting fat again. Apparently. And she didn’t like it. That’s not how she put it though. She said she hated me not being in control of myself. I love to eat. I have to eat. You’ve got to eat to live, right? Plenty. I tried that Atkins diet anyway. I ate as much bacon and eggs and sausage as I could get in my face and I lost the weight. I lost near on sixty pounds! Then she said that I always smelt of the greasy spoon where I ate. So I bought a new coat. Then she told me I smelt bad. My ex-wife never said that about me. Maybe she had just gotten used to it. I’ve read stuff about this since. If you wear a sweater and put it back in the closet and then wear it again and get all sweaty, the old bacteria starts to liven up and that’s when you smell bad. So it’s not really my fault is it? It’s just science. Or chemistry. Or whatever. Biology is not my thing. I only know the law.’
*
Adrian and TheRapist
‘My overwhelming desire for my whole life was to meet my soul mate. I had a special thing when I was a kid in school with one of my mates, but those things, they just happen while you’re growing up, right? It’s not like when you’re an adult and that was really when I knew. When I first saw her I knew she was it. From the
first moment our eyes met. It was in an elevator in the Beverly Hilton Hotel. It was morning and I was inside coming down from the fourth floor, never mind the reason, and she walked in on the second. She was smiling. Some secret little half-smile. That was it for me, I was like jelly, or jello, whatever you want to call it. I think I always knew that she was too good for me, but the thing I have always excelled at is charm. I really can charm anyone. It’s what I do best. But with her, I just felt so completely given to her, right from the start that I knew of no other way. I totally surrendered to her. I felt as if we would be together. Always. In ten, twenty, thirty, sixty years from now. I wanted to take care of her and love her and cherish her. I handmade her earrings out of bits of old tin and junk. That was how strongly I felt. Going out to buy something wasn’t enough, that’s how much she meant to me. You need to know that at this stage we were merely friends. But I loved her. I always loved her. From the first moment. I told her too. That nobody could ever have what we had. I told her that from the second day we met. She only wanted friendship back then. That was OK. I knew she’d come around eventually. When a few more guys had hurt her or ditched her or she’d just get bored, I’d be there, waiting, and she’d cry on my shoulder. I used to break out in spots, you know, zits. Huge great red ones filled with yellow pus. All over my back. Just from thinking about her. My roommate, Paul, used to squeeze them out for me. She didn’t know they were there, she hated things like that and anyway, I don’t like people behind me anymore. She was my ecstasy. Sex was out of the question then. Of course. I could not perform easily. I never could with women. I think it had something to do with my music teacher. I was fifteen when he started giving piano lessons. He’s the one that taught me all about muscle memory. In my fingers. Supposedly. Should I carry on? Cool. He was proper English and had this amazing kind of stiff, prickly accent, not like the way we spoke back then. That was even different from the way I speak now, but I’ve been here so long my accent is hashed. Anyway, my music teacher, he used to invite me up to his rooms at school. My mate too, Ned. We were boarders for a while. My mother sent me to boarding school, briefly, after the whole farmer thing, before I was fostered. Anyway, my music teacher was the one that taught me what to call my thing. I never knew what to call it before, Fred never told me that. My father died before he could tell me and my mother never referred to it. Not once. Not ever. When I first became aware of peeing I was in total shock. I thought I had a leak and would crumple up on the floor and die. But my mother refused to discuss. She would say she had a headache and disappear to her room for hours, sometimes days or at least until I fell asleep. I couldn’t ask anyone else, it was too embarrassing. Not until the farmer who just called it his special friend, but that’s for another time. So, back to my music teacher. He told me, Ned too come to think of it, to call our things down there, our ‘bag of sweets’. Ha! So I did and I felt so good that finally it had a name. And then he asked me to show him my bag of sweets. So I did, you know it wasn’t like I hadn’t done it before, Ned and I had seen each other’s loads of times and I was so grateful to the music teacher for naming it. And he made this huge game out of which sweet to have next, and stuff happened, some of the same that happened with Fred and I think that’s also what ruined my physicality with women. But with her, the woman of my dreams, I thought that my emotional love was so strong it would overcome all the physical stuff. It didn’t. She tried so hard too. When I think of all the excuses I used to dredge up. I tried everything I could think of to hold on to her. I even feigned a heart attack thinking it might make her love me more, if she had to care for me. I worked myself into a frenzy trying to make the sweat come and begged her to take me to the hospital. She sat with me all night in the emergency room. I knew when she wandered off in search of the cubicle where Frank Sinatra died, that she had finally had enough. I was wired up to some fucking machine with pads stuck all over me and bits of chest hair shaved off and she was busy asking the staff about Sinatra and where was the room where he died? Fuck! What kind of a woman does that? The staff are busy, they’re supposed to be looking after sick people, not giving guided tours of who died where! I remember breaking out in a hot, icy cold sweat. Real sweat. That’s when the ER nurse thought that maybe there was something wrong with me. I think I very nearly had a heart attack right then. For real. And if I had, then it would have been her fault, the fucking bitch. I needed her! And she wasn’t there for me. She was in cubicle fucking fourteen!